Survey of the prevalence of the articulation disorders in primary-school children (Semnan-2004)

Introduction: Articulation disorders due to the problems that create in communication with others, is a great obstacle in individual’s development and may cause difficulties. Generally, 5% of school age children have articulation disorders and should be referred to the speech therapy clinics. In this research, prevalence of articulation disorders was studied in Semnan primary school children to evaluate the range of problem. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study done among the primary school, 5 boy schools and five girl schools with 3013 pupils, were examined by speech therapists. Among them, those with articulation disorders were separated and the supplementary evaluations were performed on them in clinics. To analyze the data, Ratio test, Chi-square and correlation coefficient were used. Results: Findings showed that 8.7% (95% CI: 7.7-9.7%) of the cases, suffering the articulation disorders 8% of them having lisp, chiefly, in [s] and [z] sounds. Meanwhile, articulation disorders in males were higher than in females significantly (P=0.002). Also there did not exist any signifricant relation between the kind of articulation disorder and age (P=0.55), between the severity of articulation disorder and gender (P=0.397), and also between the articulation disorder and age. Conclusion: Considering the high rate of lisp in the elementary school children, it is suggested that the parents and school officials should pay the special attention to these problems and try to refer them to the speech therapy clinics.